My work interrogates human-animal relationships, and the complex historical, poetic, and visceral narratives therein. This overarching theme provides a framework for the abstract questions that emerge about mortality, ecology, and what it means to have a body on biological, cognitive, and metaphysical levels. Presentational contexts vary: works come to life primarily as staged multi-media productions, but often cross over into non-performative standalone sculptures and video. Recurring media include the body (dance, theater, and performance), text (written, or spoken), sculpture (wood, steel, and electronics), video (live, or cinematic), and sound (live, or pre-rendered).

Improvisation is the root of my artistic practice. It recasts my unreliable memory as a strength instead of an impediment, and codifies intuition. New projects usually demand learning new skills, which accumulate, are forgotten, are cross-referenced, internalized, and used later. For example, a life-long absorption with animals led to a three-year stint as a veterinary technician (the piss-shit-blood-puss-fur-radiation years), and the achievement of a dog-training certificate. Several years later, when confronting terror became central to my process, I dove into my fear of flying (really a fear of crashing) and became a licensed pilot. What I came away with from those two examples remains informative and generative in my work.

I want my artworks to elicit gut reactions, to carve an opening for conversation. Our inter-dependent relationship with other animals is complex. We bond with them. We use their bodies and objectify them. We eat them. We sleep with them. Watching my toddler interact with my dog and cat is deep—communication without words. It reminds me that embodying other emotional and cognitive perspectives cultivates empathy. I see the future of my work as a contribution to that end.

Biography

Since 2003, Vidich’s performance work has been presented in New York City by The Chocolate Factory, New Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, New York Live Arts, The Invisible Dog Arts Center, Abrons Art Center, EXIT Art, Facade/Fasad, Reverse, NADA Art Fair, Independent Art Fair, Dorkbot NYC, Brucennial 2010: Miseducation, SITE Fest, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Movement Research, Catch Series, Dixon Place, Chashama, and AUNTS; and in Los Angeles at AT1 Projects. He has been an artist-in-residence at NYLA, MAD, Movement Research, The Chocolate Factory, and Chashama. Vidich is a Creative Capital 2013 Performing Arts grant recipient, and a NYFA recipient in Choreography. In 2007, Vidich was awarded the International Artist Residency at the Red Stables, Dublin, Ireland. In the same year, he co-founded Culture Push, a non-profit arts organization that brings together diverse professionals to share knowledge and resources (culturepush.org). Through Culture Push, he initiated a collaborative open-source residency, called Genesis Project New York, for artists who work or want to work with or through the body.

Vidich has collaborated on performances with Yvonne Meier, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Aki Sasamoto, Deborah Hay, Daria Faïn, Allison Farrow, Lower Lights Collective, Christopher Williams, and Nami Yamamoto. In 2010, Vidich received a “Bessie” (New York Dance and Performance Award) for his collaboration on Yvonne Meier’s Stolen. He has assisted visual artists Douglas Repetto and Jeffrey Schiff. His writing has been published twice in the Movement Research Performance Journal. Vidich has a degree in Dance from Wesleyan University, and has a graduate degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts. He also achieved a pilot’s license.

In 2012, with his brother and cousin, Vidich co-founded Kin & Company, a family-run design and fabrication studio specializing in custom steel and wood creations (http://kinandcompany.com/). They are located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.